Privacy policy
In short. Your research is yours. We keep only what the apps need to work, we never sell your data, and we don’t use your writing to train AI models. You can download or delete everything at any time.
1. Who we are
The Novice suite is made by Kopanya Akademi Research & Consulting (“Kopanya AR/C”, “we”), South Africa. We are the responsible party for your personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA). Contact: kopanyaakademi@gmail.com.
2. What we collect
- Your account: name, email address, password (stored only as a secure hash by our login provider), and optional details you add to your profile, such as your institution, degree level and field.
- Your work: the projects, plans, questionnaires, data sets, transcripts, references and documents you create, when you save them to your account so they follow you between devices.
- Fieldwork responses: if you collect data online with Novice Fieldwork, the answers your participants submit, and the names and email addresses you add to invitation lists.
- Subscription: your plan, trial dates and payment status. Card details go straight to Paystack; we never see or store them.
- Emails sent for you: when the suite emails an invitation or review request on your behalf, we keep a short log (recipient, type, time) to prevent abuse.
- Technical basics: settings stored in your browser so the apps remember your choices.
We do not use advertising trackers.
3. How we use it
- To run the apps: sign you in, save and sync your work, and pass work between the four apps when you ask.
- To provide features you choose, such as AI help, reference lookups, peer review, group projects and email invitations.
- To manage your free plan, trial and subscription.
- To answer your questions and tell you about important changes to the service.
- To keep the service secure and prevent misuse.
4. AI features
When you use an AI feature, only the text needed for that request is sent to our AI provider to produce the answer. It is not used by us to train models. Please don’t paste participants’ identifying information into AI features; anonymise first.
5. Your participants
If you collect data with Novice Fieldwork, you are the responsible party for your participants’ information and for your ethics approval and consent processes. We act as your operator: we store responses securely, only you (and the people you share a project with) can read them, and we use them for nothing else.
6. Who we share it with
We share information only with the services that make the suite work, and only what each needs:
| Service | What for |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Login, database and secure storage of your saved work |
| Groq | Producing answers for AI features |
| Paystack | Processing subscription payments |
| Brevo | Delivering emails you send through the suite |
| Cloudflare / Netlify | Hosting the website |
| Crossref and similar scholarly indexes | Looking up references (only the search terms or DOI) |
Some of these providers store data outside South Africa. We choose providers that protect information to a standard comparable to POPIA. We disclose information to authorities only when the law requires it.
7. How long we keep it
- Your account and saved work: for as long as your account is open.
- Items passed between the apps: deleted automatically after 90 days.
- Email logs: up to 12 months.
- When you delete your account, your work is removed within 30 days, except records we must keep by law (for example, payment records).
8. Your rights
Under POPIA you may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or object to how we use it. In Novice Writer, open Profile → Privacy & your data to download all your work at any time. For anything else, email kopanyaakademi@gmail.com and we will respond within 30 days. You may also complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): inforegulator.org.za.
9. Security
Connections are encrypted (HTTPS), each person’s data is protected by row-level security so only they can read it, and passwords are never stored in plain text. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.
10. Children
The suite is meant for students and researchers aged 18 and over. Fieldwork with minors requires your institution’s ethics approval and guardians’ consent.
11. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date above and tell you in the apps before the change takes effect.